EDITORIAL NOTES. 
259" 
The University of Missouri is about to un- 
dergo a much-needed improvement in its 
main building. The legislature at its last 
session appropriated $100,000 for the pur- 
pose, and the work is about to be commenced. 
When completed, this building will present 
a handsome front of 356 feet, the present 
frontage being but 156, and the interior 
changes will correspond in elegance and 
degree. 
Mr. Simeon Stetson, of San Francisco, 
has written a political pamphlet entitled 
" The People's Power, or How to Wield the 
Ballot," which is very highly commended in 
several of the papers of that city. It is a 
work of some 64 pages, and is evidently the 
result of deep thought and extensive research. 
As the price is but 20 cents, the thoughtful 
voters of the country can readily supply 
themselves with it. 
Mr. Herbert Robinson, of Linn County, 
Kansas, occupies nearly two columns of the 
La Cygne Journal with a description of cer- 
tain ores of gold arid silver found on his 
father's farm, giving the corroborative opin- 
ions of exports and the results of many 
assays made in Colorado, Montana, Kansas 
City, and New York, and closing with the 
affirmation that " within five years the Big 
Sugar Creek region in Linn County will be 
turning out as much gold and silver as some 
of the best mining districts in the Rocky 
Mountains." 
Mr. G. W. Letterman, of St. Louis 
County, Mo., has recently shipped three 
hundred bushels of acorns and one hundred 
and twenty bushels of hickory nuts to Europe 
for seed. 
The main building of the Indiana Univer- 
sity was struck by lightning on the 12th ult. 
and utterly destroyedj with all its libraries, 
museums, cabinets, and collections of all 
kinds. The library contained about 14,000 
volumes, besides thousands of pamphlets and 
periodicals. The museum contained the 
Owen cabinet of 85,000 specimens, an entire 
University series of Ward's casts. Professor 
Jordan's collection of fishes, numbering over 
30,000, and all of the new and costly appar- 
atus of the laboratory. The loss will proba- 
bly amount to $125,000. 
Among the many striking and useful feat- 
ures of railway management introduced on 
the Southwestern lines by Mr. A. A. Talmage, 
Manager of Transportation, is one which 
provides for the careful qualitative analysis 
of all waters intended for use in the boilers 
of locomotives used on that system of roads. 
No tank is built till it is first ascertained that 
the water to supply it is fit for boiler use. 
A petrified forest was recently discovered 
in the Buckskin Mountains on the Arizona 
side of the Colorado river, near where the 
latter cuts through the range. Petrified trees 
were found twenty inches in diameter, and it 
is said that there is not a bush, piece of sage 
brush, or grass in the entire forest — some 
300 acres — that is not turned to stone ! ! ' 
Prof, James P. McLean, of Hamilton, 
Ohio, and Prof. French, of Clyde, Ohio, have 
been examining the big mound at Cahokia, 
Ills., near St. Louis, and also paid a visit to 
the collections of the St. Louis Historical 
Society. They are making a tour of inspec- 
tion of all the Mound-builders' works in the 
Mississippi Valley. 
The greater portion of the philosophical, 
chemical, and astronomical apparatus of the 
celebrated Dr. Joseph Priestly, the discoverer 
of oxygen, has been sent by the family of 
his great grandson, the late Dr, Joseph 
Priestly, to the Smithsonian Institution, and 
will be prominently displayed in the grand 
national museum. 
The rain-fall of June, 1883, was in excess 
of any year on record in this portion of the 
country. At Topeka it was 7.05 inches, at 
Lawrence 7.73, and Leavenworth, 1084. 
The average rainfall in the same month for 
16 years past at Lawrence has been 5.1 1 
inches, and at Leavenworth, for the past. 
13 years, 5.48 inches. 
